What happened to the promise? Only about half of Volume One of the CIA Inspector General's report of investigation into allegations of CIA involvement in drug dealing was declassified. Surprise House hearings on March 16, offered no time for public broadcast of the proceedings except on C-SPAN. Volume Two is still totally classified even though Senator John Kerry, who is cleared, and who has read it, found that it contains little beyond what is already publicly available from his own investigations of a decade ago. Sources inside the beltway tell me that only about 140 pages of that 600-page report may ever see the light of day. Yet it must be dealt with - officially. Longtime South Central activist Deacon Alexander, gave me the obvious answer to the problem.

John Deutch's promise was clear, unequivocal and impossible to misunderstand. It has not been honored. For all the brilliant and painstaking analyses of the material by former AP reporter Bob Parry (which does more to confirm allegations of CIA complicity than refute them); for the sheer magnificence of Gary Webb's reporting in The Dark Alliance; and for the "in your face" clarity of the once secret memorandum between William Casey and Reagan Attorney General William French-Smith absolving CIA from reporting drug dealing by its agents - the one major and all-important obligation remains unmet. The CIA investigation has not been made public and no one can judge the adequacy of that investigation. If you couldn't see three fourths of a movie would you know how good it was?

Allen Dulles is reported to have made a telling comment about the voluminous inconsistencies in the Warren Commission report. He said, "The American public doesn't read." I have studied material on CIA drug dealing for more than twenty years. I read. So does Gary Webb. So does Bob Parry. So does Maxine Waters. So do former DEA Agents Celerino Castillo and Mike Levine. So did New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. - So what? Trying to keep the mountain of evidence showing CIA's guilt straight is often a task which leads to "system overload" there is so much of it. Now contrast that with John Deutch's simple promise. Are we to say that average people who don't live with this issue every day are incapable of understanding this material? I don't think so. In fact, as Gary Webb is increasingly demonstrating on talk shows and at book signings - simpler is better. We know that CIA interfered with prosecutions, protected traffickers, returned seized monies to drug dealers, subsidized drug dealing companies and colluded with the highest law enforcement official in the land to protect its assets who dealt drugs. These are simple facts - easy to understand. And this is only from the material we have been allowed to see.

When John Deutch came to Los Angeles he set a precedent. When the people of Los Angeles, in their outrage, made it necessary for him to come to Los Angeles they too set a precedent. His promise is only as enforceable as the will of the people remains to make it so. There is no merit to an argument that because John Deutch is no longer DCI his successor, George Tenet, is somehow off the hook. Obligations undertaken by any part of the government, when made by an official speaking for the government, do not disappear under law when the official's name changes - at least not in theory or the law books. Enforceability is defined by the will of the people.

When I look at how this story is playing out I worry more for the future of black political clout in this nation than anything else. From the moment the Gary Webb stories first broke I was on talk-radio saying that the one difference, the one opportunity, the one telling characteristic of this story, as opposed to any other social or political effort in fifty years, is that only the political will of African-America could and would guarantee a reasonable outcome. That is why I rushed to make contacts in the black community and have ceaselessly supported Maxine Waters in her efforts. But without the voices of South Central - and every black community in this country - this issue might soon be as dead for all of the witnesses like me and Celerino Castillo who have yet to be fully heard as it is dead for a mother living in the Jordan Downs Housing Project.

But what is far worse - and more worrisome - is that the political voice of Black America will be much less listened to if it does not make the current CIA Director keep the promise that was made in Los Angeles. John Deutch came here because the Agency was afraid. The people for whom the Agency works were afraid. How much less inclined to respond will they be the next time CIA's dirty laundry gets exposed? Who will speak for the next victims or the ones after that? Whether it comes from Maxine Waters or Juanita Millender-McDonald, who arranged the first meeting in Watts; whether it comes from the Black Caucus or from Louis Farrakhan; the voice will speak only if the air is put into the lungs which give it life - at the grass roots. The grass roots do not need to read a thousand pages, they only need to remember one short sentence - and make it stick.

This article started with a simple premise. I was seeing signs that disinformation and disruption techniques used in the sixties, seventies and eighties by the FBI, CIA and other agencies were turning up again as the movement to expose CIA drug dealing nears a climax. Seventeen interviews and twenty-seven pages of notes later I am even more convinced that this is so. In order to describe what COINTELPRO is I had to go far back in the past. What I found, and it is well documented (COINTELPRO - The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, Blackstock, Vantage Press - 1976), confirmed my suspicions.

Don't expect me to rekindle old hurts here. Don't expect me to pass on rumors either. For if I came away from the research for this story with any one conclusion it was that wounds caused by COINTELPRO do not heal easily, especially for former members of the Black Panther Party (BPP) who were its cruelest victims. COINTELPRO resulted in a number of Panther deaths. I found the same pains lingering even for members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) as described by author Ward Churchill in his book Agents of Repression (South End Press), the POW movement (The Men We Left Behind, Sauter and Sanders, National Press Books - 1993) and, in me, from the Perot Campaign in 1992.

I'm going to start this article with the punch line. In the book National Security Law (Dykus et al, Little Brown - 1997) we see, in the cases of Halkin v. Helms and Hobson v. Wilson, revelations from the government's own documents how CIA's operation MH-CHAOS and the FBI's COINTELPRO joined forces to destroy both the anti-war movement and "Black Nationalist" movements.

In Hobson the Court found, "The goal and strategy of these secret programs are not in doubt: a memorandum prepared and circulated by one of the FBI defendants described the COINTELPRO New-Left [anti-war] program as follows: 'The purpose of this program is to expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activities of this group and persons connected with it.'

Electronic eavesdropping, mail opening, informants, agents provocateur who plant rumors to create hostility, anonymous letter writing campaigns designed to tarnish the reputations of leaders and create feuds, forged letters, creation of front groups in competition with the real movement, massive infiltration by agents to disrupt activities; these are the tactics of COINTELPRO. Although COINTELPRO is traditionally known as an FBI program and the bulk of such operations have been traditionally run by the Bureau, I

use the term here to encompass operations also involving the CIA, the Defense Department, local police agencies and even the major political parties.

COINTELPRO tactics change in response to the political situation. Always, like Judo, they depend upon positions or "energies" already created within movements and they use that energy to push or corrupt a given position into something other than what was originally conceived or intended. As an example, for both the BPP and AIM which advocated self-defense - only if attacked, provocateurs insinuated themselves in key positions close to the leadership and then advocated offensive operations and became "hawks" to discredit the movement. Coincidentally, FBI Agent Richard Held, dubbed "The Father of COINTELPRO", transferred immediately from Black Panther operations to American Indian operations before the sieges at Wounded Knee and the arrests of Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks.

Like the BPP, as other movements drew increasing amounts of grass roots support, each wave of volunteers brought increasing numbers of infiltrators who quickly insinuated themselves into positions of power. FBI records showed at least 60 to 70 FBI infiltrators of the Black Panther Party and up to 316 for the Socialist Workers party. In Chicago, an FBI informant quickly insinuated himself into the position of bodyguard for BPP leader Fred Hampton and gave the FBI detailed floor plans of Hampton's residence just days before Hampton was shot more than thirty times in his sleep by Chicago PD unit which worked with the FBI. I want to clearly point out that COINTELPRO tactics only involved violence when the targeted group had adopted a position of violence as a possible alternative. I consider the assassinations of King and Malcolm X to have been "stand alone" operations mounted in ruthless desperation after COINTELPRO tactics had failed. The point is that COINTELPRO used energy, which was already in existence.

The Perot campaign of 1992 was arguably the largest and most explosive American grass roots effort since the turn of the century. In the Los Angeles County Headquarters, where I served as Press Spokesman, we had a list of 15,000 volunteers and probably fifty people in the office at any given moment. I witnessed no less than 15 different people performing disruptive actions and "misplacing" records and money. Katheryn Nichol, a former Perot organizer from the Bay Area said, "No opportunity to create dissension in the ranks was unexploited."

For the Panthers Huey Newton was objective number one. Before Newton it had been King. And before King it had been

Malcolm X. While much debate still lingers as to who did what to who, no debate exists over the fact that Huey Newton led a purge of the party which helped to destroy it. Manufactured strains then led to the murders of Panther members Bunchy Carter and John Huggins at UCLA in 1969. After the UCLA shootings Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt was framed for murder by FBI informant Julio Butler.

Kathleen Cleaver, ex wife of the late Eldridge Cleaver, and Elaine Brown, former confidant of Huey Newton, remain on opposing sides of the Black Panther split to this day. Yet their responses are remarkably similar on one point. I asked Kathleen Cleaver if people could be used without their

knowledge. She replied, "They've got to be able to do it! They must because they get people to believe rumors or take them up on offers which people have no knowledge are from CIA." Regarding rumor campaigns she said, "Electronic eavesdropping provided the foundation for effective rumors because they always had a basis in someone's already held belief." Elaine Brown said, "The FBI didn't have to do anything but find people's weaknesses and encourage the weak to be even weaker."

The most well known leaders are always the prime targets. Huey Newton foundered amid widespread allegations of drug abuse, drug dealing and "sexual indulgences" which were then played for maximum effect by the government. That he underwent a drastic personality change is well documented in video footage of him between 1967 and 1972. John Stockwell, former CIA station Chief in Angola is quoted as saying that, "Huey Newton is a direct result of operations run by CIA to ensure he would turn out the way he did."

Non-violent groups fell to the same tactics. This time the appeals were to a hunger for power, property or prestige, or to jealousy and petty rivalries. As the media began responding to increasingly credible revelations that the government knew that live POWs were left behind, a number of new groups were formed, sometimes at government expense, and some leaders were directly co-opted through government funding and perks into accepting the "party line". Other dedicated POW leaders, like former Green Beret Ted Sampley were simply lied about. "The Senate Select Committee report on POWs said that I was paid $300,000 for my work," said Sampley who had been first deceived and then paid $500 by the Park Police to infiltrate a suspect POW group. When he saw that he was being used he quickly disengaged. "I was broke and that was a blatant lie. But I still had to respond to it."

A former elected official who was extremely active in the POW cause and who had nothing but good words to say about Sampley said simply, "They're good. They're doing it today. They won." COINTELPRO had been turned against the official also.

Anonymous letter writing was another effective tactic of COINTELPRO. "The letters we got were always typewritten and never signed," said Cleaver. The mailing of anonymous and forged letters went under the code name "Operation Round Nail". Recently, a similar letter has been sent in the movement to expose CIA and drugs. In the last year, and especially recently, as more and more documented evidence surfaces from within the government establishing that CIA has dealt drugs for decades, COINTELPRO tactics have surfaced and been directed at the leading voices on the issue. These include assertions that some leaders are really agents of the government, unfounded rumors that certain leaders do not have the experience they claim or have made unfounded assertions, and anonymous letters being sent which have caused serious friction. Other quarrels have been started or fueled over allegations of money-chasing and ulterior motives. As always, the government plays on someone's already expressed doubt or already demonstrated peccadillo.

Not long before his assassination, just as he had begun to oppose the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King received an unsigned letter urging him to commit suicide. The FBI sent it. On the day that Ross Perot withdrew from the 1992 presidential race I, as Los Angeles County Press spokesman for the movement, was crushed. The ABC Evening News opened with a shot of me crying. Just moments before I was to go on CNN Live with Ed Rollins, a former Navy SEAL named Ed Haas, who had been with MACV-SOG (a CIA operation in Vietnam), walked up to me and said, "Don't you think you might kill yourself over this?" He said it in front of several witnesses.

Coincidentally, just before scheduled testimony to the Pike and Church Committees, former FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan expressed regret at having caused the suicide letter to be sent to King. Days later, before he could testify, Sullivan, who was wearing a red plaid jacket, was mistaken for a deer and shot through the head.

Speaking only for myself I have recently been told that I never went through the police academy, was a government agent and, in the Department of Justice investigation, was implied to be crazy and imagining conversations I had with former Kerry Committee attorney John Mattes (see article this issue). The net result for all movements has been utterly predictable. As Kathleen Cleaver said to me, "No matter how powerful the movement got, the disruptive efforts increased with equal measure." As Ross Perot said to me in 1990, "You'd think they'd try something different once in a while but they don't because it works."

With near complete unanimity every person I interviewed offered the same suggestions for countering these tactics, which are sure to increase as we get closer to forcing an admission:

1. Confront any rumors immediately by going both to the source and the target with a group of people. Minor embarrassment is nothing compared to destruction of a group's effectiveness.
2. Always put your faith in the people who have paid a demonstrable price for the cause. Compare the price paid with the allegations.
3. Never let "walk-ins" or so-called defectors assume an immediate position of responsibility.
4. Wherever possible, allow solidarity with a group to provide strength, which is individually unattainable. Lone wolves are seldom tarnished but they are also seldom effective.
5. All negative rumors should be assumed to be untrue until confirmed by a group or committee.

But at a deeper level I think the answer lies in avoiding the human frailties which we all have by recognizing, as Elaine Brown said that, "Enlightened self interest is seeing that your welfare is connected to the welfare of others."

The bad news is that we all live in glass houses. The good news is that we do not have to fall prey to old tricks.

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On July 23, Janet Reno finally released the report completed last December by her Inspector General, Michael Bromwich. For a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Bromwich had prosecuted Oliver North, hopes had run high that the report would be honest. Those

hopes were dashed in dialogue which was disparaging and basically even more hostile than that offered up by CIA in Volume One of it's own investigation.

No one could possibly improve on the brilliant and painstaking analysis of the actual report done by former AP correspondent Bob Parry. It can be found on his web page at www.consortiumnews.com.

I remain the only available witness capable of credibly testifying to witnessing first-hand a CIA agent ordering and facilitating the movement of drugs and weapons. That CIA agent was, at one time, my fiancée.

My evidence is supported by what the DoJ report admits exists, a detailed statement given to the FBI in 1978 which predates by one year, closed door hearings conducted by a Senate Subcommittee looking into the guns-for-drugs trade which contained an near perfect item-by-item match with my FBI complaint. In addition I was denied release of a CIA memorandum, written in response to letters I wrote describing my observations of CIA operations, on grounds of National Security. That document will soon be sought in Federal Court.

For the rest of my observations on the DoJ report the following letters speak for themselves.

August 5, 1998

The Attorney General Janet Reno
514-2001
10^th & Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Reno:

I am referenced in Chapter Four of Michael Bromwich's report entitled "The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions" dated December, 1997.

While I believe the report to be flawed, inconsistent and inaccurate in many areas I am writing you now to address some specific points in that report's discussion of me and my allegations. Because of the wording in that report, specifically as it pertains to previous discussions between myself and former Federal Public Defender John Mattes, it is difficult to ascertain whether or not the IG's office misrepresented my statements when it interviewed Mattes regarding my allegations. It is however, quite a simple process to substantiate that Mattes did, in fact, make the statements I attribute to him - and then some.

That this bears on the accuracy and honesty of the IG's report is clear from the fact that Mattes, in his dealings with Jeff Feldman and Leon Kelner generated large amounts of relevant paperwork in his defense of Jesus Garcia. That paperwork, as indicated by Matte's work on the Kerry subcommittee, and in a multitude of subsequent public appearances confirms my allegations as to his statements

and their context. It is inconceivable that the Inspector General failed to locate this paperwork.

I have enclosed a copy of a letter I mailed to Mr. Mattes today which clearly demonstrates that he said the things which I said he did. Insofar as that is the case then Mr. Bromwich's investigation is flawed and inaccurate.

Further, and increasing my suspicion that your Department had deliberately misled the American public, is the fact that Mr. Bromwich states that he was unable to locate retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent Ed Heath. Heath is currently a significant part of an article in the Washington Times Magazine - Insight, which can be viewed on the Internet at www.insightmag.com. I find it difficult to believe that your Inspector General, with all of the vast resources of your department, cannot locate a DEA agent who is receiving a pension.

The substance of my conversation with Ed Heath in 1994 had to do with my investigative report on Albert Vincent Carone who was Oliver North's "bagman" during the Contra years. Carone's operations for CIA also tied directly into the death of DEA agent Kiki Camarena.

With respect to the alleged denials on the part of other DoJ employees of the particulars of our conversations I emphatically repeat my assertions, as stated, and I reaffirm the content of statements I made to FBI SA Stan Curry in Los Angeles in 1978. Factual assertions of that statement were corroborated in hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery one year after I made them in 1979.

I have expressed these objections to the Honorable Maxine Waters and to the intelligence committees of both houses.

The Inspector General's report constitutes an enormous disservice to the American people and to the truth as a whole.

Sincerely,

Michael C. Ruppert

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August 4, 1998

Mr. John Mattes
2600 Douglas Rd.
Douglas Center - Suite 1108
Coral Gables, FL 33134

Dear John:

I need your help in solving a mystery. As you know the Department of Justice recently released its Inspector General report of investigation into allegations of Contra and CIA involvement in drug trafficking arising out of stories in the San Jose Mercury News. That report, signed by Michael Bromwich, almost unilaterally found no DoJ knowledge or evidence of CIA involvement in drug trafficking during the contra era.

In particular, the report addressed allegations and statements made by me to Office of the Inspector General investigators after my confrontation with DCI John Deutch in November 1996. In those statements, when I was asked whether I knew any past or present DoJ employees with knowledge of CIA involvement in drug trafficking and Department of Justice awareness of same I, of course, gave them your name.

In order to simplify the mystery I will quote what the DoJ report (Chapter 4, page 9) says that I said. It is substantially accurate - at least as reported there, although I do not recall saying that your home was burglarized. But I do recall clearly that you had expressed concerns for your safety and that of your family. I did absolutely say that you were threatened and intimidated. I have no idea what they told you that I said before soliciting your reaction, which is the first part of the mystery. I also specifically said that I did not have my notes present and that DoJ should clarify any questioned points with you. However, as you will see, my statement was surprisingly accurate.

The IG reports states, "John Mattes was a federal defender assigned to defend Jesus Garcia on a weapons charge in Miami in 1985 resulting from Garcia's involvement in running guns to the Contras. According to Ruppert, Garcia had told Mattes about his involvement with the CIA, and Mattes himself had been in houses where weapons were stored 'within hours of the drugs having been removed.' Ruppert said that Mattes had traced calls made from the houses to George Bush's office. Thereafter Mattes was threatened and intimidated, and his home burglarized."

The report says next, "When questioned about this story, Mattes laughed. Mattes acknowledged knowing Ruppert, but denied the truth of Ruppert's claim. Mattes opined that Ruppert has taken elements from books about the Contra revolution, and misrepresented them…"

The report continues to say that you reported that "neither Garcia nor his codefendants claimed to have been involved with CIA…"

As you know, you and I met in 1986 when introduced by an award winning investigative journalist and author who had met you while working on a book related to cocaine trafficking in south Florida. We had three conversations via telephone in the 1986-7 time period. That journalist had prior experience as a crime and investigative reporter for the Detroit Free Press, The Los Angeles Daily News and the San Diego Union. For the moment that journalist prefers to remain anonymous insofar as written statements are concerned, but I have spoken to him recently and he confirms those elements of your story as stated above. In addition, I am in possession of a 1986 document he wrote, which was registered at that time, which recounts his meeting with you and, apparently, your investigator Rafael Maestri. I shall refer to that as "The Synopsis" in subsequent paragraphs.

In addition I am in possession of two videotaped lectures you gave which I shall refer to as "Fairfax" and "Brown". The "Fairfax" lecture was recorded March 15, 1997 at Fairfax High School at a symposium where I gave a lecture with you, Celerino Castillo, Maxine Waters, Peter Dale Scott, Gary Webb and others. I refer here to tape number three from that event. The "Brown" lecture was taped on November 20, 1996 in the bay area at a symposium sponsored by former California Governor Jerry Brown. Both tapes are currently being sold through the Center for the Preservation of Modern History in Santa Barbara, California.

On the Brown tape at 1:03:35 you say that there was evidence of CIA and NSC involvement, "based on phone numbers, including one into the White House."

On page 6 the Synopsis states that you revealed, "for yet another thing, Jesus Garcia, the lowly jail guard, had in his possession the Washington telephone number of Lt. Col. Douglas Menarchik, an aide to Vice President George Bush."

These statements are in complete agreement with my recollection of our conversation.

At 1:05:51 of the Brown tape you state, "The war was an excuse for cocaine." At 2:28 of the Fairfax tape you state, "The Costa Rican end of the Contra War was an excuse… a pretext for cocaine." At 4:59 of the Fairfax tape you state. "John Hull was coordinating the cocaine…" "[He was] a drug dealing terrorist asset of the CIA."

At 1:08:20 of the Brown tape you state, "two admitted CIA agents admitted that they made an alliance with him [Morales] to fly their cocaine into the U.S."

On page 6 of the synopsis the investigative reporter describes information given to him by you regarding Jesus Garcia. "He knew, for example, of Contra involvement in cocaine trafficking. Some of the men who had stored the weapons in their Miami-area homes were major drug smugglers and dealers." Both the investigative reporter and I recall you telling us that you, as part of your investigation had visited these homes and that you had subsequently come across the name of Oliver North's aide, Rob Owen.

As to threats and intimidation on the Fairfax tape at 6:26 you state that "[Jeffery Feldman] had received a call from The U.S. Attorney stating that Mattes was in trouble and facing serious repercussions… " On the synopsis at page 16 you are quoted as saying [the CBS reporter slipped Mattes a note saying] "You are in grave danger. Be warned. Hull is after you, and the Embassy is assisting. Get out." On page 12 of the Synopsis, after being advised of your rights by your supervisor you are quoted as saying that he screamed at you, "Mattes, don't you understand what we're telling you? Get out! You've crossed the line… or you're going to be on the wrong side of a grand jury!…"

In at least one place in both the Brown and Fairfax tapes you refer to threats from the U.S. Attorney.

After the investigative reporter quotes you as describing a live artillery shell placed outside of Defendant Garcia's residence he quotes you on page 21 of the synopsis as stating, "It's amazing that, except for Carr, we're all unscathed. I take a lot of physical precautions. I'm just very careful in dealing with cars, and places and weird things."

Finally, as to the context of your statements, I think that point is clearly addressed by a statement you made at 16:40 of the Fairfax tape, "If all the little people are forced to go to jail for little bits of cocaine, why not the CIA?" and a statement you made at 1:21:20 of the Brown tape, "They [the CIA] are criminally liable."

Clearly then my recollections and statements to the Inspector General's office are not out of context at all. Your own words provide the context.

So now the mystery.

The only explanations for what appeared in Mr. Bromwich's report are that: A), The Department of Justice asked you to respond to outrageous statements which I did not make; or B), that your statements, as reported, are completely inaccurate; or C), that you did, in fact, make the statements they attributed to you.

I know you to have been an eloquent and outspoken critic of CIA's involvement in the drug trade for many years and at great personal risk. Therefore, I will not make any conclusions in this letter as to what transpired. I will merely ask for your input to help me and others who are concerned on this issue understand what happened. I have called your office twice and faxed you the relevant passages of the report and I await your response with best wishes.

Sincerely,

Michael C. Ruppert

cc: The Hon. Maxine Waters Janet Reno
Michael Bromwich
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

As of the publication of this issue I have received no response to these letters. They were sent via certified mail.

---------------

The closing words of the premier issue of From The Wilderness in March of this year were, "Clinton is toast. So is Gore. Beneficiaries of Clinton's demise are George W. Bush and Colin Powell."

People were a lot more skeptical then than they are today.

I am not political in the sense that I favor either Democrats or Republicans. At present only Maxine Waters has my unqualified support. That is based upon her conduct which has gone far beyond any I have seen exhibited by a member of Congress on the issue of CIA and drug dealing. She has acted with honor. What convinced me early on that Bill Clinton was doomed was that, on the first day the Lewinsky story broke, all of the major papers in the country, along with the major electronic outlets devoted enormous amounts of column inches and airtime to it. They also had a wealth of detailed information ready to go on what was supposedly a breaking story.

The coverage was so heavy on Day One that I was immediately reminded of a story told by Col. Fletcher Prouty about how, after returning from the South Pole and landing in New Zealand, he bought a paper just hours after the Kennedy assassination only to find that background stories and photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald had already been sent to New Zealand papers - in advance.

The American press has an enormous ego. It does not invest its energy and resources to run like a sprinter with a story unless it is nearly certain of the outcome. Bob Parry has clearly established that papers like the New York and Los Angeles Times have such egos, that they never admit to a major mistake in coverage.

President Clinton's conduct is questionable on any number of more important issues than his sex life. Mena, Arkansas is a good place to start. But those issues all lead back to powers that do not want to be exposed and members of the "so-called" opposing party. I believe that Bill Clinton's goose was cooked before the first story broke - eight months ago. Lewinsky provided a non-collateralizing issue that stuck only to Bill Clinton.

Is there a similar pattern? Well if you recall, Jimmy Carter's presidency was pretty thoroughly trashed over other kinds of issues for two years before Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1980.

If the tail wags the dog, who wags the tail?

Not until the shadow government is exposed, not until we force an exposure of the corrupt nature of the national security establishment, will there be a semblance of real democracy in this country. Leaders are chosen and cast aside in the great political theater we are watching as we reach for more popcorn and red herring. In the meantime you and I pray that the movie has a happy ending.

I was talking to Cele Castillo not too long ago and telling him that I thought Clinton was toast. He said, "Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it."

--------------------

So many of you have called and written to offer praise for this little rag and I can't tell you what it means. I've only had a couple of challenges to my stories and I stand by every one of them, one hundred per cent. The only minor correction I have to offer is that in last month's issue I said that Bobby Garwood was the only POW to come out of Vietnam alive. I should have added, "after the Peace Accords were signed." I thought it was understood.

Those of you receiving free issues are humbly encouraged to find $35 to keep the venture afloat. Your praise has told me you like it. A check for $35 will help me make it better.